1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to computer-aided design (CAD) and, more specifically, to a resolution-adaptive mesh smoothing brush used to edit a three-dimensional (3D) object.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many CAD programs, such as 3D surface-sculpting systems allow a user to edit a 3D object using a set of brushes, which are metaphorically similar to paint-brush tools used in an image editor such as Adobe® Photoshop®. A 3D brush has an area-of-application, i.e., the area of the 3D object within the boundary of the 3D brush, and applies some operation within the area. In addition to performing painting operations, 3D brushes may also be used to modify the shape of the 3D object.
One conventional type of 3D brush is the smoothing brush, which smoothes out details in the underlying surface by changing positions of vertices of a mesh that represents the 3D object. The effect of the conventional smoothing brush is based on the assumption that the underlying polygons of the 3D mesh have a near-uniform distribution of vertices (i.e., that the lengths of edges in the mesh are all similar). When the 3D mesh contains areas of higher vertex density and lower vertex density, the conventional smoothing brush has a limited ability to converge to a truly smooth surface.
Therefore, what is needed in the art is new techniques for computing updated positions of vertices of a 3D mesh when a smoothing brush is applied to the 3D mesh.